Interactive explainer
Sixteen Steps
A drum machine drawn part by part, which you can play and spin on its turntable. Switch to step edit and its sixteen pads become one bar of music.
Keys 1–4 Q–R A–F Z–V play the pads · Space plays the pattern · Enter step edit · ←→ turn · ↑↓ tempo
Why this one
Drum machines look complicated, with rows of keys, knobs, a screen and sixteen pads, but the idea underneath is small. A bar is cut into sixteen slots, and a clock walks through them, playing whatever you put in each one.
The small details
The pads keep time.
01 / Sixteen pads, sixteen steps
Press PATTERN EDIT and the pads stop being drums. Each one becomes a 16th note of a four-beat bar, and a light walks across them, one row per beat. A lit pad means the selected sound plays on that step.
02 / Tempo is the length of a step
Turning the PUSH ENTER knob changes only the length of a step. At 120 BPM a step lasts 125 ms and a bar lasts two seconds. At 90 BPM each step stretches to 167 ms.
03 / Two ways to write a beat
You can switch steps on one by one, or press REC and play along. Your taps land on whichever step is nearest, which is called quantizing, so a slightly early or late hit still comes out on the grid.
04 / Built, or recorded
Bank A rebuilds the TR-808's sixteen instruments from the same ingredients the 808 used. The hi-hats and cymbal mix six square waves at clashing pitches (205, 304, 370, 523, 540 and 800 Hz), and the cowbell uses two of them. The drums are tuned tones that ring and die away. Bank B plays recordings instead: horns, a temple bell, thunder and birds from the Jar and Ulsoor Lake experiments. Each bank has its own beat, so switching banks switches the groove, from the 808's kick and hats to thunder, water, rain, crickets and two horns answering each other.
05 / The screen draws the sound
The waveform on the round screen is drawn from the same audio you hear. The glow on each pad follows that sound's loudness, so a kick fades slowly and a closed hat is gone in a blink.